laughing, not broke. always going up the chain of command asking for permission to open fire. the first explosion, the men are killed. you can see him attempting to crawl away. a van pulls upthey are attemptip the wounded. there are children in the band. they opened fire again and the men are killed and the children are critically wounded inside. if we had seen what came out of the iraq warlock and february 2007, if we have learned the story at that time after it happened of the men with their hands up trying to surrender, there would have meant an outcry, people are good. people care, that what it called

for investigation. perhaps one would have begun. it might well have saved the lives of so many, certainly months later, perhaps that's an apache helicopter unit under investigation would not have done what it did to the young videographer not to mention the other people critically injured. none of that what happened to them. that is why information matters. it is important we know what is done in our name. today we're going to talk about this new age of information. we're joined by two people, many of you know well. earlier i asked a young man who had come to the gathering why he had traveled so far carried he said, are you kidding? to be with two of the most dangerous people?

the national review called this the loss of nerve slavoj zizek -- the philosopher slavoj zizek the dangerous man of all time. he has written over 50 books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history, and political theory. his latest book "living in the and times -- end times." we are joined by another man who was published perhaps more than anyone in the world. in fact, he wrote a book on the underground computer information age called "underground -- the international computer underground." but with the iraq war logs, the

afghanistan war laws, and the u.s. cables that have yet to be fully release, i would say that julian assange is perhaps the most widely published purpose on earth. -- person on earth. today will have a conversation about information and i would like to ask julianne to begin -- julian to begin by going back to that moment in 2007, and talk about the significance of those for you and why you have chosen to release this information. >> amy, on that criteria, perhaps rupert murdoch's goal most widely published person on earth, and people have said that australia has given two people to the world, rupert murdoch and me.

begin publishing. [laughter] in some ways, things are very easy for us and for me. we make a promise to sources that if they give us material of a certain type of significance, of diplomatic, historic, or ethical significance, and they are under a certain threat, we will publish it. that is actually and up. we have a goal with publishing material. it has been my long-term believe that what advances of civilization of our entire intellectual record and our understanding, about what we're going through, what human institutions are actually like and how they actually behave. if we are to make rational policy decisions insofar as any

policy decisions can be rational, then we have to have information drawn from the real world and a description of the real world. at the moment, we are severely lacking in the information from the interior of the secretive organizations that have such a role in shaping how civilizations you all and how we all live. so getting down into iraq, that was 400,000 documents, each one written in military speak. on the other hand, each one had geographic coronet down often to 10 meters. -- origin often down to 10 meters. it was the first and largest

history of the war, most detailed and significant history of the war to ever have been published probably at all, but definitely during the course of the war, and so provided a picture of the everyday squalor of war, children being killed, thousands of people being handed over, police brutality, tortured -- to the reality of air support and how modern military combat is done, linking up with other information such as this video that we discovered of this man being attacked. as an archive of human history,

this is a beautiful and horrifying thing but that the same time. it is the history of the nation of iraq in the most significant recording, during its most significant developments in the past 20 years. while we always say newspaper stories revealing and personalizing some issues if we're lucky, some individual event or family dining, -- dying, this provides the entire context of the war, over 400,000 deaths. we work together to statistically analyzed this with various groups around the world such as the iraq body counts, a specialist in this area, and lawyers here in the uk who

represent iraqi of refugees, to pull out the stories of 15,000 iraqi civilians labeled insurgents by the u.s. military who were killed, who will never be reported in the iraqi press, never fully reported in the world press, even in aggregate. even saying 1000 people died today. not reported in any manner whatsoever. just think about that. 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world. that is a very significant thing. compare that to 2000 people who died in 9/11. imagine the significance for iraqis. that is something that we specialize and and i like to do and i've always tried to do, to go from the small to large.

not just by abstraction an analogy, but actually by encompassing all of this together and then trying to look at it through mathematics or statistics, to try to push both of these things at the same time -- the individual relationship, the state relationships and the relationship that has to do with civilization as a whole. >> slavoj zizek, the importance of wikileaks today in the world? >> if you could give me two hours. i would try to contain it. how proud i am to be here and let me mention something which may be most of you do not know. even to organize this of and -- event, moved out from central

london and so on. let me begin with the significance of what you, amy, started with, the shots of those iraqi helicopters. do you know why this is important? the way it functions today, let's not be naive. if people did not know about it, but the way those in power manipulate it, yes, we know dirty things are being done, but you're being informed about this obliquely, in such a way that basically you are able to ignore it. can i make a terrible, maybe sexual offense here -- julianne, do not be afraid. [laughter]

a husband may know abstractly my wife is cheating on me. ok, i am a modern, tolerant husband. but when you get the total of your wife doing things, it is quite a different thing. -- the photo of your life doing things, it is quite a different thing. i remember about two years ago in serbia, people rationally accepted we did horrible things. but it was just abstract knowledge. then they got hold of the details that effectively showing a group of serbs shooting a couple of bosnian prisoners. it was total shock, although

again, strictly, no one learned anything new. so that i do not get lost, here we can see the significance of wikileaks. many of my friends skeptical say, what did we really learn? isn't it true that every power in order to function, you have collateral damage? you have to have a certain discretion? what to say, what to not say? but what wikileaks is doing is extremely important. neither me cordially and believes and total openness. but what are we dealing with here? another example from cinema, a wonderful joke at the beginning

of one found from lubitch, someone asked for cream, and the waiter said, we have only milk. can i serve your coffee without milk? that is the tree care. -- that is the trick. when we learned something from the media, to repeat the metaphor. they be paid as if they are serving coffee with cream. that is to say, of course we know that they are not telling the entire truth. but that is the trick of ideologies. even if they do not like it, the implications, the un said is alive. and you bring this out. you are not so much catching them with their pants down on what they explicitly say, but what they are implying.

it is absolutely a crucial mechanism and etiology. it does not matter what you say, it matters what you impolite to say and so on. and so to make the last point, are we aware how important an era we are living in today? information is crucial and so on, we all know that it is crucial one of the main reasons capitalism will get into a crisis is intellectual problems. in the long term it seemed that we cannot deal with it. but just look at the phenomenon of trying to [unintelligible] computers getting smaller and smaller and everything is done for you in the cloud. but clouds are not out there. they are controlled. you relied -- maybe 11 iphone.

-- maybe you have and i found. it is good if you relied on the news through iphone or whatever, that apple signed an exclusive agreement with murdoch, exclusive provider of entire news and so on and so on, here's the danger today. it is no longer this clear distinction a private space/public space. the public space itself is privatized in a whole series of invisible ways. the model of this being clouds. it involves new modes of censorship. that is why you should not say, what did we really learned? maybe you learn nothing new, but

the old fairy tale, the emperor is naked. we may all know it, but the moment one stock publicly says the emperor is naked, everything changes. even if we learn nothing, we did learn many new things. but former matters. so do not confuse julienne in his gang, in a good sense, not the way that they are saying about you, you are doing something much more radical. that is why it aroused such an explosion of resentment. you're not only disclosing secrets and so on. in the old marxist way, the bourgeois press today. it is the way to be transgressive.

even now you can violate what you are able to save your you are changing their rules of how we were allowed to and violate the rules. it is the most important thing that you can do. [applause] >> and yet, julian, as you're releasing information in all different ways, it your turn to the very gatekeepers who in some cases had kept back disinformation. you worked with the mainstream media throughout the world in releasing various documents. talk about that experience and that level of cooperation and what has happened after that. >> can you turn the volume of pleas for the front of the room? the volume for the balcony. >> he will accuse you, you see.

he is the italian leader. [laughter] this is the only way to keep things going. >> if you want to have an impact and you promise an impact and you are an organization which is very small, were you have to leverage the rest of the main parade -- where you have to leverage the rest of the mainstream press, how you make an impact and get people to do things they would not have otherwise been able to do, unless you have an army to physically go somewhere and a panzer division that can roll over, the only way to easily make an impact is push information about the world too many people across the war. the mainstream press has developed expertise in how to do that. it is a competition for people's

attention. so if we have had several billion dollars to spend on advertising across the world, even if we could get out, we will not easily would have been able to make the same impact that we did. and we do not have that kind of money. instead, we entered into relationships with and now over 80 media organizations across or, including some very good ones that i would not want to disparage, to increase the impact of translations and pushout material into 50 different countries. that has been subverting the filters of the mainstream press, and an interesting phenomenon has developed among the

journalists who work in these very large organizations that are close to power and negotiate with power at the highest levels. the journalists having read our material and gone through it to pull out stories have themselves become educated and radicalized. that is and physiological penetration of the truth -- ideological penetration of the truth in to these organizations. that may be one of the lasting legacies over the past year. even fox news, much disparaged, is an organization that wants to viewers. it cannot do anything else without viewers. it will try to push news content. so with "collateral murder," cnn only showed the first few seconds and a blank out all of the bullets into the street,

completely blank it out, and said so -- said that they did so out of respect to the families. they cut out the most politically salient points. but fox actually displayed the first killing seen in full. quite interesting. fox not proceeding itself to be amenable to the threat, if not acting in a moral way, actually gave people more of the truth than cnn dead. d. id -- than cnn did. they took this content and david the more people.

-- and gave it to more people. i think the truth that we got out of fox is often stronger and the trick we got out of cnn. and similarly for many institutions in the media that we think of as a liberal. perhaps slavoj like to think about that. that yourced to commit really are not an idiot. it happens. what you said now is extremely important. with all the respect for -- and i do not mean this ironically -- honest liberals who believe people should be informed and so on, but there are limits and how they function, so we should ruthlessly, not on at lately, -- and not unethically, but

ruthlessly exploit every window of opportunity here. an example from a totally different domain, from cinema, the usual hollywood left, [unintelligible] like "pelicans breed," "all the president's men," the president is so corrupt, connected to certain corporations and so on. cut nonetheless, it is ideologies. why you exit the movie theater in such high spirits after seeing, i know, "all the president's men," because it is how we are, an ordinary man can

topple the mightiest men in the world. but let me take that tv program of the fox news, and please do not take me for being crazy, " 24." last season of "24," if you approach it the way that you approach those shots, it is for me much more consequential. you get jacked bauer in total despair. he passed would met what he tried to do in previous seasons, playing this role of someone doing the dirty job, torture, prisoners, he says, no, it has to go public. the president also steps tempered the true message of this, within the existing

ethical political coronets, you were stuffed into a deadlock with there is no way. it is a very pessimistic way, much more honest than anything marxism, marxism, what a great country we are, and so on. in journalism, i agree with you, and everyone knows this. already marks said -- marx said that we can learn more from honest conservatives and from liberals. what honest conservatives do is that they do not try to sell you some uplifting bullshit. they are ready to show you the deadlock and that is what is important to date. the-today. [applause] >> i want to let distracted looking down, but i want to bet

that " it's accurate. but as i want to get the quotes accurate. newt gingrich so that julian assange is engaged in international terrorism which leads to people getting killed. he should be treated as an enemy combatants and wikileaks should be closed down permanently and decisively. bill keller of the "new york times"said that it is conspiratorial. judith miller who often code articles that appeared on the front page of the "new york times calls " alleging weapons of mass of destruction without naming sources, said that julian assange is not just a good journalist. he did not care at all about verifying the information he was putting out or to determine

whether or not it would hurt anyone. joe biden said julian assange is a high-tech terrorist. congress member peter king of new york called for assange to be charged under the espionage act and asked whether wikileaks could be designated a terrorist organization. not to focus on the u.s., tom flanagan of the canadian prime minister's office called for his assassination. and former alaska governor sarah palin -- [laughter] call you an anti-american cooperative with blood on your hands. can you respond to these charges? [laughter] [applause] >> after bill keller said that, it does not leave much route --

much ground for replied. sarah palin once on twitter complained about my grammar. [laughter] which is really the biggest insult to me. calling for a drone attack is virtually understandable. that event in the united states with very interesting. the quotes are outrageous and so on. but the context in which they occurred was fascinating. within a few months, was all i knew mccarthy as the bush we saw a new mccarty -- we saw a new mccartyist hysteria sprang up.

on the other hand, yes, but they a lot of opportunities for politicians playing to their base and the powers and the military-industrial complex. but the power that is completely unaccountable is violent. when you walk past could group of ants in the street, in u.s. until the crush of you, you do not say to the others, stop complaining or you put a drone strikes on their heads. you completely ignore them. the institution does not even bother to respond. it will sell all of these figures in the united states coming out -- and yet we saw all these figures in the united states coming out and responding with vigor.

bill keller in legitimizing how he was speaking about me, you love to sit on panels explaining what you did. that is a choice by bill keller. the choice to go around and try and twist history and it just history -- and just -- adjust history. these people are frightened of the true history coming up and coming forth. i see this as a positive sign. i've stated before that we should always see censorship as a very positive sign, and it tends toward censorship as a sign that the society is not yet completely thrown off, but still

has some political dimension to it, high heat, what people believe and think and believe in the words that they listen to actually matters. and some ar -- in some areas, it does not matter. even in some areas of the united states, it does not matter. we were able to give information in such volume and intensity that people actually were forced to respond. it is rare that they are forced to respond. i think this is one of the first positive symptoms i have seen in the united states in a while. to actually speak at this level, the cage can be rattled and people can be forced to respond. in china, censorship is much more aggressive, which to me as

a very hopeful symptom for china, that it is still a political society even though everything everything is in contractual and banking relationships. at the moment, the chinese government and the public security bureau are scared of what people plane. all-what people think. -- what people think. >> i agree, speaking about china, maybe you know all wonderful -- is not an anecdote. it confirms your point. about two or three months ago, the chinese government, i do not know which agency, passed a law which formally prohibits in public media -- the main press, books, comics, tv, movies -- all stories which deal with time

travel or alternate realities. literally. i checked with my friends in china. the official justification was that history is a great matter and it should not be left to such trifling games and so on. of course it is clear what they really are afraid of, for people to even imagine alternate realities or possibilities. to repeat your point, i think this is a bad sign. they at least need the prohibition. we do not need a prohibition most of the time. if someone proposes a radical change, we simply accept a spontaneous realities. you propose to raise health care spending 1%. it would mean the loss of competition and so on and so on. again, i totally agree with you. and a final comment on the

persons that any mention. newt gingrich is for me, sorry to use this strong word, thus, the earth. -- the scum of the earth. i have no great sympathy for bill clinton. but when there was the monica lewinsky campaign, newt gingrich was making moralistic that tax. it was confirmed in media, when his wife was dying for cancer to or three years before, he visited her in the hospital, forcing her to sign, not even have and the decency for letting her die, forcing her to sign divorce agreements so that he could marry another woman. and at the exact time of the lewinsky up there, -- up there,

he was having an affair. there should be some kind of ethical committee which simply claims people like this are a threat to your youth and should be prohibited from appearing in public, whatever. [applause] let me make it clear that i am not crazy. i mean this in a positive sense. yes, in a way you are a terrorist. in the sense that gandhi was a terrorist. let's face the facts, it is not just something that can be swallowed whole, all the interesting news in the newspaper, here, this is happening, he is with a lady got out. totally not true. >> do we have a denial on that

one? on the latest gaga -- lady gaga one? >> absolute denial on everything. i did not even listen to one of her songs. [laughter] >> her representative was not that the fine. they just said no comment. >> your set a said no comment and then you would join a much more glory. what does this mean? in what sense was conte a terrorist? -- gandhi a terrorist? he tried to interrupt the normal flow of the british state in india. you're trying to interrupt the normal, very oppressive functioning of the information's circulation and so on. the way that we should answer

this is simply by another analyst paraphrase of that wonderful line from "beggar's opera." founding a new bank. what is your terrorism to the terrorism that we accept day-by- day keeping things the way that they are? when we talk about violent terrorism, we always think about acts which interrupt the normal run of things. but what about violence which has to be here in order for things to function the way that they are? and i'm very skeptical about this, but we should use the term terrorism, it is strictly a reaction to a much stronger terrorism which is here.

instead of engaging in the smallest gain, though, no, he is a good diet, like stalin set about when and, if you play with caps. -- said about lenin, you play with cats, no, you are in the sense of terrorists. but who are they that accuse you of terrorism? [applause] it is a nasty job. they tried to give us that the news, all the news that you're giving, [unintelligible] let me give you another wonderful jewish-american joke that was told to be by a friend recently, a guy kisses wide at the operation and talk to the doctor after the operation. first, the good news, your wife has survived and will live longer than you.

what is the bad news? the doctor said, the bad news there are some problems that as a result of the operation, she won't on able to be controlled her excrement. there will be some strange flew with all the time escaping from her vagina. she will not be able to do this and that. the guy gets more into a panic. and then the doctor says, he taps the guy on the shoulder, do not worry, this was just a joke. everything is ok. she died during the operation. that is the good news that they are giving at the end. [laughter] [applause] and he is always telling me when she was kind enough to receive meet in new york, not even the s

word. >> for that we could be taken off the air. i wanted to ask you, julian, about bradley manning. mike huckabee, who was also a presidential candidate, the governor of arkansas, said that the person who leaked the information to julian assange should be tried for treason and asked you did. whoever leaked information is guilty of treason, and i think anything less than execution is to kind of penalty. bradley manning, beyond u.s. soldier who was in iraq, has been helped for more than a year, much of that time in solitary confinement in quantico in virginia. it was exposed that his treatment was tantamount to torture. p.j. crowley, the white house --

the state department spokesperson spoke to a group of loggers at mit and said his treatment is stupid. for that, he was forced out of the state department. bradley manning was then moved to fort leavenworth because of the outcry. but he remains in prison. he remains not tried. what are your comments on him? >> thanks for answering his question, but it is difficult for me to speak in detail about the case. but i can speak about why it is difficult for me to speak about it. bradley manning is an alleged source of wikileaks who was detained in baghdad. although there was very little

reporting on it at the time, he was shipped off to kuwait where he was held in extrajudicial circumstances in kuwait and a similar manner in which detainees are held in guantanamo bay. eventually through some legal methods, he was brought back to the united states. he has been imprisoned for over a year now. he was being kept in quantico for eight months under extremely adverse conditions. quantico is not meant for long- term prisoners. the maximum duration of the past few years has been three months. people that have been visiting bradley manning say, and we have other sources that say, that

they were applying those conditions to him because they wanted him to confess that he was involved in a conspiracy to commit espionage against the united states with me. that pressure on manning appears to a backfired. by all reports, this is a young man of high moral character. when people of high moral character are pressured in a way that is illegitimate, they become stronger and not weaker. that seems to have been the case with bradley manning. he has told u.s. authorities as far as we know nothing about his involvement. there is been a secret grand

jury taking place 6 kilometers from the center of washington. it involves 19 to 23 people selected from that area. why was it in alexandria, va. that grand jury was selected? it has the highest density of government employees anywhere in the united states. united states government's -- the united states government was free to select the jury. this is a type of medieval star chamber. they are these 19 to 23 individuals from a population sworn to secrecy. they cannot consult with anyone else. there is no judge. there is no defense countered their four prosecutors. the best there is no defense. there are four prosecutors.

a grand jury would not only indict a ham sandwich, but ham and a sandwich. it was a grand jury that was removed because of abuses, combines the executive and the judiciary. this common-law notion of the separation of the branches of power is removed from the grand jury. the u.s. government argues that the individuals. did they perform a judicial function? they have been going out and

they can force people to testify and they have been pulling in all sorts of people that are connected to wikileaks. they have recently a number of individuals who have been called to the jury understand what have been going on. they have refused to testify and have pleaded the third amendment. from the outside, it appears to nullify the political witch hunt in the united states. in response, the grand jury has been instructed to send out community certificates. these are certificates that say that if you come to the grand

jury to testify, your testimony cannot be used against therefore, you have no right to plead the fifth. what this means in practice is that compulsive interrogation in secret. no defense counsel. they're not even lawyers admitted into the grand jury. it is just the prosecutors. there is another grand jury in the united states and is investigating anti-war activists. these are a classical device looked at a very critically in the u.k. 400 years ago.

if justice is to be done, it must be done publicly. it is interesting why or how it has been waylaid. you want police to have investigation? we get people from the community and they monitor the investigation, they make sure. this has been a way to complete the subverts the judicial system. >> i would like to say that the terms that you just mentioned. all of this extra legal space, the combatants, and so on. the paradox is that we should connect it to universal human rights.

what i am opposed to is the reference to a universal human rights. you have to construct a space which is in no longer of the space of the enemy. you have to create what the great american referred to as the gray zone. we have to do something about it. here, i would say that things are more complex than it would appear. concepts like unlawful compact

[unintelligible] i am not a utopian here. i cannot imagine a situation where i cannot promise you in advance that i would not torture someone. let's imagine this ridiculous situation where a bad guy has my young daughter. i know that the guy knows where my daughter is. i absolutely oppose is to legalize this. if, out of despair, i do something like this, it should remain something unacceptable. what i am afraid of is that this system gets institutionalized.

at the end of the roads, he once legalization of torture. -- somebodydoctors has to play this role. >> speak for yourself. >> to investigates, you can torture him the and so on and so on. for me, what is horrible is not the torture, but it is even more of seen this organization of torture. you have a certain moment of

glory. this report guy did something extraordinary. do you know how difficult that is? simple elementary morality prevails over legal considerations. i hope i am not a utopian. if there is a person who deserves the nobel peace prize -- [applause] ordinary people, not to -- i am not even idealizing him. they are not saints. all of a sudden, and they see something and something told

him, sorry, i have to do something. this is so -- it goes against and it is exploited by our enemies. no, they are not. from time to time, there are ethical miracles. this is very important. let's not believe [unintelligible] who are they to talk about it? we, bill left, -- the left,

nothing special, but all the sudden, they do something wonderful. that is our only hope today. [applause] >> one of the difficulties -- we have another one in prison which has received very little recognition. he has been imprisoned for allegedly revealing [inaudible] it was traced to us. if they put up their hands and say, it was me, it makes it very easy to defend them in a moral way. it makes it easy to shower them with awards until they do that,

the defense is that they did not do it. it is very hard to for us to start praising people because and your team that praise, we would be guilty of the offense. >> you mentioned a while ago that you had a good deal of documents. they have not been released. are you planning to release them? >> there is a complication with those documents and another group of documents. we are under a type of blackmail in relation to the documents. it will be dealt with over time, but it is quite difficult to deal with it at the moment.

i do not want to specify what kind of blackmail is. it makes it difficult to address the situation. it is perhaps something like people would guess. [laughter] there are a range of possibilities. >> let's talk about the beginning of wikileaks. tell us about how you founded it, and named it, and if you have been disappointed with what you have been able to accomplish. >> i am amazed by it, of course.

it is an extraordinary time. i think we are half of the way there. solidified the historical record. once we start getting that sort of volume and concrete ties and protect the rights of everyone to communicate with each other, and that is the basic ingredient of civilized life.

it does not mean anything. someone's right to know, someone tried to communicate, and that is the ground of structure for all of that -- all that we treasure about civilized life. i do not mean industrialized, i mean people collaborating to learn from previous experiences and from each other. enable everyone to be a contributor to the historical record is something that i had

been involved with for about 20 years. protecting people who contribute to our shares. it also means protecting publishers and encouraging distribution to everyone who needs to know about it. that long term vision is something that i developed in various ways. in 2006, i saw there was a way of achieving justice through this process. it could be realized using an intellectual and social capital but i had available. it was quite a complex plan.

it was a difficult thing to do. to master the resources and to build not only reality that people could support and were encouraged by, but that people would defend. it is one of the -- it is extremely interesting that although this venue was canceled, including the institute for education at the university of london on the basis that it would be too controversial, at that point, we ended up at that venue.

despite that, we have managed to pack out 2000 people and london on a saturday at 25 pounds a seat. i see that as extremely encouraging. on the one hand, we have the every day institutional censorship of saying something is too controversial. institute of education braid on the other hand, -- institute of education. on the other end, all of you came. i am not sure about what had happened five years ago. i am pretty sure that it would not have happened five years ago. when i said before that censorship is always an opportunity, it reveals something very positive about a

society. society would no censorship would be in a very bad state. the censorship of not giving up this venue so easily is also related to why you are all here. it is the other side of the coin. people are worried the change is possible. you are here because you think the change is possible. you are probably right. that has been a very interesting experience to see that. i thought i was pretty cynical five years ago. of course, i was simply a very young and naive fool in retrospect. learning how to -- being inside the center of the storm, i have

learned not as about the structure, not just about how powerful but many governments are that we have dealt with. but how history is shaped and distorted by the media. i think the distortion by the media of history, of all the things that we should note, is the worst thing. it is our single greatest impediment to advancement. it is changing. we are -- it is not a foregone conclusion, which is what makes this time so interesting.

it has been educated outside of that mainstream media distortion. all those young people are becoming important within institutions. maybe it is something that i will speak about with you later, amy. but i do want to talk about what it means when institutions, the most powerful institutions are all organized using computer programs, using technical young people. what does that mean when all those technical young people

adopt a certain value system? or when they are in an institution that does not agree with the value system? there have been moments in the past like that. it is those technical young people who are the most internets educated and have the greatest ability to receive the new values that are being spread and the new information about reality that are being spread outside the mainstream media distortions. [applause] >> the leader has spoken. i would really like to begin with what you said is extremely important.

when you move from right to speak, right to communicate, i think that in the history of modern thought, in his distinction between private use of reason. i gather with my friends in the kitchen of my apartment. it is legal faculty, where what you are thinking, developing, it sets up an event by a power structure. establishing power structure, we

are the public use of reason. why is this so important? what i see wikileaks is part of a global struggle, this domain of a right to know, right to information. even education, this is all one conservative attack on the public use of reason. the goal is very clear. make universities more responsive to social problems.

we should all become experts. we need psychologist who will tell us how to control the crowd. we should be here at as kind of an ideological to resolve problems formulated by others. this is the end of intellectual life as we know it. when they are talking about -- sorry, i use the word that i should not.

when we hear about immigrants is sorry, the greatest asset precisely this independent space of public reason. if there is something to defend of the judeo-christian legacy, this democracy, not only is this the right to cast a vote totally isolated. public of the communications, this would be our answer to the politicians. not this -- you are defending

the judeo-christian legacy. all the bad things in the world are the result of european imperialism. maybe. who argued to even speak about judaeo-christian legacy? -- who argued to even speak about the judeo-christian legacy? this is the greatest threat to the legacy, and so on. that is the end of europe, for me, in the sense of what is progressive in europe. this is part of the much larger story. especially with the problems to date, ecological problems. let me give you an example. i would like to ask you --

wikileaks and china. the chinese people pay such a price before public space of reason. in china, the catastrophic consequences -- it is the greatest artificial lake and the world. -- in the world. that lake is just about some subterranean faults. they admitted that -- it was rendered much stronger because of this. this is not a long boat lines

-- along the lines, after the battle, everybody can be the wise general. no. my friends there told me that geologists were already warning the government about this. because of this collection of water there, the effects are much stronger felt. the river is the main transportation in china. -- line in china. just to conclude, one more thing. this is not a critical point. what wikileaks can do, we should not -- we live in times of

incredible kid alogical investments -- is the logical investments. -- ideological investments. let me tell you a story from israel. five or six years ago, one of their is dorians -- one of their historians wrote a more truthful account. a more balanced view. the critics had an intellectual. then they got a shock of a lifetime. we have -- we should have thrown all the palestinians in the west bank and we would not have any problems today.

i disagree not with you, but with another person for whom i have respect. a friend of mine told me that chomsky told him that we do not need any critique of ideology. we just need to tell people the truth. truth must be contextualized. t really conclude, -- to willing to conclude, this is my point about wikileaks great you are not simply telling the truth. you are telling the truth in a very precise way of confronting -- the public discourse, it is not is about telling the truth.

this is very important. if you listen to -- [laughter] he was a stupid bad manager. ok. the point? basically, there was a line about iraq when it was discovered there was no weapon of mass destruction. we were lying, but we were lying in a truthful way. this was part of a larger strategy. this is maybe the most effective

defense of a liar. i am lying, but so what? i openly confessed that i was lying, so i am truthful. this guide looks as an idiot and it? as an idiot. we should not deceive you, this guy is an idiot. you act as a liar, your a cheater and a liar. but this will not deceive us. we should not allow them to the space of selling their lives in a cynical way it as a people of truth. [applause]

>> i want to ask you about the arab spring. what you see as wikileaks rollee. what role did wikileaks play? >> it is hard to disentangle the story that we have from people who were in egypt and from the newspaper, one of the great newspapers publishing in the middle east. >> you lived in egypt for a time? >> i lived in egypt in 2007. i was staying, i was staying at

miss egypt possible house -- miss egypt's house. there was a van outside filled with 24 soldiers at my front door. for this sort of work that we were doing. it was the ultimate cover. egypt is a very interesting place. at that time, you did not feel in most areas of cairo the presence of the dictatorship. in fact, people go to work, they go to cafes, the economic basis

and the technological basis in cairo seemed pretty much the same as london. if you compare it to -- to my mind, actually, if we say that it is a democracy that ruled and manages the united states, this is completely ridiculous. when we look at countries that are dictatorships, or soft dictatorships, the technological activities and the behavior, for most people, are exactly the same. it is when you straight into

those areas of egypt and areas of cairo where the interior ministry, level of paranoia and fear increases. at that time, there was around 20,000 political prisoners of different types in egypt. egypt has a population of about 80 million. this is always something that i am aware of. when you have an intelligent c.e.o. that -- this is a mirror image of the problem we have with the mainstream press. they always write to their own favor. a country which goes from a position of not treating writers

well to treating writers well and not treating everyone else well, by writers i mean people who have the ability to project a voice. for those 20,000 political prisoners in egypt, they could gain no attraction in the western press. -- and they could gain no traction in the western press. egypt was perceived to be a strong ally of israel and the united states. all of the human rights abuses and political of pieces that were occurring every day in egypt simply did not get traction. there was one moment where these

20,000 prisoners started a strike demanding conjugal rights, and demanding that otherwise be permitted to visit them. look, it is bad enough that these people are political agitators, let alone sexual political agitators. that was something that was picked up by the western press. that was some of my experiences with egypt when i lived there. later on, when we worked on cable-gate, we chose french

partner. cables were published in early december. material that was published in egypt back in december was pretty soft because of the threats that the newspaper was under. there was a number of critical cables that came out about the uneasy and -- tunisian regime. the argument that has often been used, if you just tell the people what is going on, they will be angry about it and they

will oppose it. the real situation was much more rich and interesting than that. the population starts to know and they start to note in a way that is undeniable. they also start to know that the united statesand they cannot deny what is going on inside tunisia. the elite within the country also know what is going on. and they cannot deny it. this situation develops where it is possible for the united states to support the regime. and intervene in the way that was not possible to france.

also, and our strategy in dealing and our survival strategy was to overwhelm. we have saudia arabia invading bahrain to do this. win these states have problems with their own to deal with, and they turn inward. it caused a deletes -- a caused the elite to have to deal with their own political crises and not spend time giving intelligence briefings.

activists saw this very quickly. they started to see an opportunity. immediately, it was banned by the government. the whole this paper was redirected. the packers came in and wiped out all of the files.

the cables were spread around online and other forms, translated by a little internet group. it presented a number of different -- everyone could see. no one could deny that the regime was fundamentally corrupt. it became undeniable for everyone, including the united states. the united states, if it came down to supporting the army, they would probably support the army. that gave activists and the army a belief they could possibly pull it off. but this was not enough.

then you had this action by a 26-year-old computer technician on december 16 of last year. he was hospitalized and died january 4. that is taking an intellectual frustration and irritation and how eager for change -- hunger for change to an emotional, physical act on the streets. there are other things that are more systemic issues. you had aging rulers in the middle east whose regimes were

becoming weaker. as the intellectual management was decreasing. you also had the rise of satellite television's. the decision by et al. jazeera -- by al jazeera to film and broadcast protesting in the streets. off in alations kick crowd situation, like this one. the regina saying, -- the regime is saying, this is a minority. what the media does is censored those voices and prevents people from understanding that what the state is saying is in the minority, not the majority. once people realize their view is in the minority, there is no better way to do that then it in

some kind of public square. that is why it was so important in egypt. everybody could see they have the numbers. there are moments like that politically. just before the berlin wall fell, everyone thought that it was impossible. why? it is not that people suddenly received new information. the impression they received is that everyone had the same believes they had. people became short of that. -- short of that. you had a sudden change and then you have a revolution. i often feel like we are on the edge of that. the alternative ways of people becoming aware of what their

beliefs are, what each others' beliefs are, is something that introduces that truly democratic shift. i've often lasted -- the situation is improving. we find they do not descend on a french cable from panama revealing that the united states has declared the right to board one third of all ships in the world without any justification. they read the front page of "the new york times" and they say, i agree. i disagree.

that is something -- it is hypocrisy to say that you care about a situation but you do not actually go to work. it does serve an important function. the function that it serves is the function of the square. is to show the number of voices that are lining up on one side or another. >> i want to -- you talked about what you released today. can you explain why you did that? [applause] >> when you released the papers, i spoke to daniel last night. "the new york times" has 1000 pages of the pentagon papers.

amazing stuff. what was the question? [laughter] when he released the pentagon papers, did they suddenly change things? actually, nixon was reelected after data released the pentagon papers. the vietnam war did not stop. the information was very important. over time, it was very important. the most boring thing to come out of the papers was the reaction to the pentagon papers. they describe a situation in the past -- the most important thing to come out of the papers was the reaction of the pentagon papers. it showed a tremendous overreached by the nixon

administration. "the new york times" probably would not have printed the papers. it was scheduled to be published in four months' time. very interesting. on december 6 last year, visa, mastercard, western union, bank of america all bank debt together to engage in an economic blockade against wikileaks. it has continued since that point. that was over six months now that we have been suffering from an extra judicial economic blockade that has occurred without any process whatsoever. the only formal investigations into this, one was on january 13 last year by tim geithner, the

secretary of the treasury. he found that there was no -- the other was by a a visa subsidiary the found that we were not in breach of any of these the's guidelines or regulations. yet the blockade continues. it is an extraordinary thing that we have seen. they are instruments of u.s. foreign policy, but instruments of the state's, but rather instruments of washington's patronage network policy. there was no due process at all.

over the past few months, we have at a number of cases. we have built up a case against visa and mastercard under european law. tech -- together, they own about 95% of the credit card payment industry in europe. therefore, they have -- they cannot engage in certain actions to unfairly remove people from the market. >> speaking of other legal cases, i just wanted to ask you about what you face next week, the extradition case on july 12. your gear. he is very well known for representing prisoners out of

guantanamo, a renowned human rights attorney. he interviewed many people in sweden and the united states and talks about appealing ins -- a feeling in sweden of an attack represented by your past lawyers on the swedish justice system. >> are lawyers never attacked and the integrity of women. >> the history of this case is as unfortunate as it as as possible to a mountain. each of the human beings involved deserves respect and consideration. i wanted to ask if you are seeing this as a change of approach with your legal team in dealing with your possible extradition to sweden. >> possibly. the situation -- what has

happened to europe and what has happened to sweden is fascinating. it is something that i have come to learn because i have been embroiled in it. it is intellectually extraordinary. we see, for example, that the european union introduced an arrest warrant system. to extradite from one state to another state of the you. it was put in place in response to 9/11. it introduced the concept of mutual recognition. this is a feel-good phrase that state mutually recognizes

any other state in the eu. what it seems to be talking about, if you think about it, given the realities, a mutual recognition of the elite in each country in the eu. it is a method of being at peace. each country has made a tribute with each other to recognize each other and to not complained about the behavior. you might say, okay, we have

justice systems in various countries, yet they vary in all sorts of ways. some are worse, depending on your value system. we have sunk so low that it is not even like that anymore. the european arrest one talks about the mutual recognition of judicial authority. it has permitted each country to define what they call a judicial authority. sweden has chosen to call policemen and prosecutors judicial authority. the whole basis of this term being used in the original introduction of the european arrest warrant was that he would keep the executive separated from the judicial system. there was meant to be a natural -- there are many things like

this going on. i have not been charged. is that right? is it right to extradite someone to a state where they do not speak the language, where they do not have family, they do not know the lawyers, they do not know the legal system, if you do not have enough evidence to charge them? you will not even come over to speak to the people concerned. previous complaints about its these problems have led to some inquiries in sweden. the biggest swedish law magazine had a survey on the spread -- on this. one-third of the lawyers responded, yes, these complaints

are problem. on the other hand, it is a situation where the swedish prime minister and the justice minister have personally attacked me. they said i had been charged when i had not been. it is a delicate situation. this week and we have now is not the sweet enough past, in the 1970's. -- the swedish and that we have now is not the swede in in in the past. -- sweden of the past. this is a different dynamic that has happened now. we have to be very careful in dealing with it. it is one thing to be considerate of differences, but

it is another to tolerate any difference. i do not think any difference can be tolerated in the eu. what is it to prevent the justice system from fundamentally collapsing and the cane? we say there is mutual recognition. major recognition between the u.k. and romania. what of the romanian justice systems collapse is more and more and more? who is going to account for that? who is going to scrutinize that? the only sustainable approach to scrutinizing the justice system's of the eu is the extradition process. it is extradition of lawyers and defenders to have the highest

motivation to scrutinize the quality of justice in the state's they have been extradited to. that is a help the system. -- healthy system. the european arrest warrant system removes the possibility. it is not open to us to look at any of the facts in the case. that is completely removed. all they're arguing about is where the two-page request is a valid document. >> [inaudible] >> i am so sad that we do not have time to go into it. this strange mutual recognition.

paradox of being extradited without being charged. let's not take that path the first. when you said you were staying with miss egypt, i hope there was some american fundamentalist who said, and now everything is clear. you were seduced by someone who was really and al qaeda agent. now things are clear. >> we have one minute to go. >> one minutes in this broader kristen since. -- christian sense. so what. [laughter]

what made me so impressed is this. my liberal is really friends tell me all the time, listen, you cannot negotiate. if you examine got the on the west bank -- gaza on the west bank, there was peace six or seven years. there was an incredible compromising spirit from the palestinian side. it was absolutely clear that israel is not interested in peace. second point, i think it is so important, the exact words that you use. it confirmed my point.

they could no longer deny it, and so on. i know that you know and you know that i know. know.act as if we do not the function of wikileaks to push us to this point where you cannot pretend not to know. let's give you another example. this is cynicism at its purest. obama made the point, the basis of peace should be the 1967 borders spread -- borders.

the reaction was as if obama took orders from al qaeda upgrade this was the official u.s. policy. although this was the u.s. policy, it it was part of the underwritten thing not to talk about it. [applause] egypt, the truth about egypt. we western europeans would love to seek a second democratic movement. officially, we got exactly what we wanted. a secular uprising.

and do you know how we be paid? -- behaved? finally, they are alone. we are alone here. the girl says, ok, let's do it. we were a little bit like that. you cannot get it like that. [applause] the most important thing, what you already said, aimee, if we are approaching the end. even if you are not wikileaks, it changed the entire thing.

even at the level of publishing , spreading information, you pushed things in a very formal way to the point of under a liability. nobody can pretend that wikileaks did not happen. it will be very interesting to classify all the reactions to wikileaks. repression, the nile, whatever. -- denial, whatever. others say investigative journalism. the approach i would have followed would have been something like it is just misused.

what i am saying, ok. to conclude, do not worry. this is the moment of truth. because nobody can ignore it, it has changed the entire thing. the point is not allowed it to -- to remained faithful to it. [applause] >> just a note -- we will be out signing books on the left of the lobby and we would love to talk to you. i want to end with this question. tomorrow, at your turn 40 years old. what are your hopes for the future?

>> there is a big future. that is a future where we are all able to freely communicate our hopes and dreams and the historical record is an item that is completely -- it could never be changed, deleted, modified. that is something is -- that is my lifelong quest to do. from that, justice lows. -- flows. most of us are reasonably

intelligent. if we communicate with each other, organize, and know what is going 9, and that is pretty much what it is all about. in the short term, it is that my staff stopped hassling. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> the head of the national institute of health talks about science and innovation in the u.s.. the state department calls on the syrian government to withdraw troops. that briefing is later. in case you just missed it, wikileaks founder in a forum in london. >> on tomorrows "washington journal," we continue our discussion on federal spending and the national debt. after that, pete sepp of the national taxpayers union. a "washington journal" is like every morning at 7:00. bill clinton is among the speakers at a campus progress national conference. other topics include special interest groups and politics.

that gets underway at 9:00. a discussion on science and innovation in the u.s.. we will hear from the head of the national institute of health. hosted by the hamilton projects, this panel is about an hour. >> wonderful leaders in the field of science and technology and medicine. it is interesting because i was the host of a show called "the next big thing." i think it led me here today. i want to open the questions, you place in the vacant role -- a significant role. back then, out we were wondering what it would lead to. what do you say has emerged?

>> it has been 10 years since the publication of the draft. it has been a decade-long experience here. i would say that it has transformed the way that we asked and try to answer questions about human biology. a graduate students have a hard time imagining how people did anything worthwhile without this information. it is so much a minute to minute experience. later on top of that -- layered on top of that is interesting

information. information about what genes are expressive, the various ways the genes are marked, and all the networks that are emerging from that. for anybody who is interested in human biology and medicine, we have moved into entirely new territory that is radically different than what we had prior to the availability of this information. it has become -- it has spilled out into a lot of other data sets.

the difference it has made a comment we used to have to approach questions about human biology with a rather narrow focus if we had any chance of making any progress. you had to have a hunch about what the answer was going to be. now it is a bomb was set of information. we've been able to derive a lot of the details about that information already. you can ask comprehensive questions. what are the components of the human commune system? -- immune system? we have the tools to get there. there were some slightly cynical comments over the past few months. why haven't we seen a total

revolution in medicine already? anyone who was proposing that having the instruction book in a language that we understood 10 years ago was going to result in an array of new diagnostic and therapeutic has not been paying much attention to all the steps necessary. we are getting their break my prediction we are on the pace of -- that we would be. we have derived information that is useful for making diagnostic predictions about who is at highest risk for breast cancer, a few other diseases. we have learned how to make predictions about what drugs are going to work. a woman who has breast cancer

diagnosed today who has a tumor that is smaller than 2 centimeters. she faces the question, and this is a lot of women, should they have been cured by surgery, radiation, or is it necessary to offer chemotherapy? in the past, women went along with chemotherapy because of the slight improvement in the outcome. now there is a method that allows you to look at the gene expression in the cancer itself. you can make an accurate prediction about whether it needs chemotherapy or has a low likelihood to reoccur. about 50,000 women will take advantage of the test. that will save about $100 million in terms of chemotherapy that will not have to be administered because it is not considered necessary. there are definite implications already. most of the promises of genomics

are revolutionizing the health care system. what are the steps we need to go through to take the information about the molecular basis of disease and translate that into targeted, effective therapeutics? we can see the path forward. it is a long, complicated path. it is fraught with high risks of failure. it requires special attention to ways to speed that up, to look to the process the way an engineer would to see if there are ways we could move the ability forward at a maximally productive pace even in difficult economic times.

>> angela, explain what you are doing and the connections. >> what we have been interested in is trying to understand how nature makes materials. it is incredible and making hard materials. the abalone is an excellent example. it is an explicit structure. it is built in any ocean using non-toxic materials. it has the genetic information on how to build this great material and environmentally friendly conditions. i thought that was fascinating and thought about giving that information to a battery or solar cell or saddled --

catalyst. you could build with the same controls and processes. it is and how to find the dna sequence that codes for a high- powered battery. it is finding the code to assemble a solar cell. that comes from doing 1 billion experiments at a time to be able to have 1 billion different dna sequences and look for one that does what you want. that is complicated. a lot of the advancements that have come with the human genome project are being able to have dna sequence in extensively -- to have dna sequenced extensively -- inexpensively. we can take advantage of the technology that has party did

developed. we will look to see if we can find one sequence out of 1 billion that will make a new catalyst material for converting methane to energy. we will find one sequence out of 1 billion it can build a better solar cell. i could not have done the without the groundwork that makes it not so difficult for us to work on in my lab and be able to expand upon. you can find a dna sequence that can code for protein to improve the efficiency of solar cells in a few weeks. i always say i have never been accused of focusing. [laughter] there are so many opportunities.

all you have to do is look around and pick one. health care, energy, the environment, all of those are science and engineering opportunities. my group focuses on energy from a dna storage, batteries, solar, chemical reactions for energy. we work in cancer as well. we produce new diagnostic probes for the detection of cancer. we also look at sequestration and storage. i am a materials scientist. everything is made of material. it is about how the atoms are arranged and put together that makes the difference. >> are you seeing benefits? are we going to get a battery that will last for ever? >> this is a small, simple

battery that you can use to light an led. through genetic engineering, we engineered organisms to make it higher powered over time. it got better. the first build one that was ok, and in better through genetic engineering. this one actually went to the white house as an example of environmentally friendly clean energy. it has spun out a couple of companies. one just came out with a touch screen for a cell phone made with environmentally friendly processing. usually touch screens are made from an electrode material. is volatile, expensive, and gm- critical -- geo-critical.

e,d thepany i found i technology has changed. i found a solution-based process that does not use those materials. a uses materials that are much more abundant and environmentally friendly. this is now out after several years of development. >> what does it take to get a bright idea to market? is it a pain in the neck in this country to get it to fruition? our repaving a good path for inventors? -- are we paving a good path for inventors? >> it depends on the field. if you are university-based, if you have mit there to assist you in obtaining a patent and

obtaining a licensing agreement to have it be developed into a product that the public can benefit from. at the moment, there is good and bad news. the good news is there is a lot of innovation in our universities and companies in terms of coming up with a potential major advances that will be beneficial. the bad news is capital is harder to find now than in the past. it has slowed down the process of taking some exciting new inventions and moving them forward. unless you have something that will clearly result in profit short term, it is harder to find investors willing to put money into it. i assume you would agree with that from your own experience. >> i definitely do.

m.i.t. has been very supportive in helping to do the patents and make contact with the to help develop or license the technology. both the companies are founded, the technology was very young when it went into the company. it is very high risk. it took about eight years. the idea was developed and now we have a product. we had mostly venture capital money. it took the investors believing in it to have become too product. -- to have become a product.

we have a manufacturing plant. it can have big implications in electronics and gm-political issues. -- geopolitical issues. it to people believing in us. that was key. >> today, would you have the same success in convincing people? would you be able to start the company of this sort? would it be tougher? >> i think it would be tougher. the other company has been going faster because we have more experience. it is looking at a big market. there is a lot of interest in it because the possibilities are so huge. that is just a couple of years old.

we will see. it is tricky. it is hard for young faculty members to know whether an idea is worth pursuing and to get from the basic science idea to commercialization. it is a tricky path. it is on a very individualized basis. we're lucky at mit to have quite a bit of mentoring. it is a risk. >> my concern is we have young scientists who never have the chance to get into this environment to be able to pursue such inventive ideas. because of funding constraints, it is difficult to get started. nih is a major funder of medical

research in the world. over the last four years, the likelihood of grants was about one in three that the grant would be funded. that was the availability of funds versus the requests for them. some might have argued we would have been better off doing one in two. in the last few years since 2003, the budgets have flattened. this year, we have seen a decrease in real dollars. the success rate has been trimmed back. it is now about one in five and is headed to one in six probably this year. that means a lot of early stage investigators who are often the engine of these ideas are having difficulty getting the laboratories going. they depend upon the grant support for a starting point. we try to do everything we can

to give them a leg up to compete against each other and not the more established investigators. we have done everything we can to try to support as many new applications, even if it means some of the continuing applications are being cut back. that means a lot of these proposals that could make a difference are going begging in the current circumstances. it is a difficult time to try to encourage this kind of innovation when the pressure is so strong. >> things do not invented. you do not get the cure for diseases you are hoping for. >> i am sure we are missing out on opportunities that could be supported in a more favorable environment. it is hard to assess with the

proposal whether it would be a successful new innovation. sometimes it is the wacky science that you do not want to miss supporting. but it could be a difficult one for a. the process to identify to do it if it means not doing established science in the same pool. we have similar programs that focus on high-risk, high-reward proposals to be sure that those can compete against each other. the resources are limited to do as much of that as we would like. >> the graduate students and young faculty are a different kind of scientist and engineer.

they have a very innovative mind. they come from interdisciplinary training for the first time. they have a different way of looking at the world. the peer-review process makes it difficult. i want someone looking at things from a different direction. it is the combination of different disciplines that can push things forward. they are the most fun kind of students to educate. my degrees are all in different fields. with my first proposal, i got a review back that said i was insane. [laughter] i think it is not like that now. it is now more the norm to be educated in different disciplines. it is celebrated. we need to figure out how to keep facilitating that.

we need them to make it into the mainstream funding so they can have the radical ideas that change the way we treat disease and solve problems. >> why did they say you were insane? >> we were going to use genetic controls to build semiconductors. >> the ultimate loss o multidisciplinary approach. >> it worked out ok for me. >> you are working in a multidisciplinary world now because of what you are doing. >> it is, but it is not so unusual. i am lucky to be at a new institute at mit. it is have engineers and have cancer biologists -- half as a biologist working together. i am an office suite with three cancer biologists and myself.

it is fantastic. i have an expert to bring me in what is important. we had a conversation this week where we were going back and forth about an idea. we're now in the same office suite. it is really fantastic. we're learning how to use each other's instrumentation and speak each other's languages. it is very fun. >> there is a language barrier. >> it is a language barrier and style barrier. people say they work on hypothesis- research. i do not know what that is. i want to know how to solve the problem. that is the way i look at it.

if you take those combinations and put it together, it is a whole new world. >> in the biology field, there has been a focus on the hypothesis-driven research. there could be a problem with hypophysis-limited research because you do that instead of asking a comprehensive question about a problem. the field of genetics has stimulated that kind of thinking. it is the ability to ask comprehensive questions. the hypothesis is you have the ability to answer the question. that is not a bad way to pull yourself toward in an exciting way. the cancer center at mit is a

nice experiment. in my own research lab, the people depend most on are the ones that came out of physics, engineering, or computer science. computational approaches are so critical for our ability to sift theugh data and ninmine nuggets. one area we think is particularly ripe for this attitude is the process of how we go from the fundamental discoveries about the molecular basis of disease to develop diagnostic tools and therapeutics. the process is not a pretty picture in terms of the way it has been conducted. the average time to go from the inside of a possible target for therapy and having a proven is about 15 years. the failure rate is about 98%.

that means costs are exorbitant when you add up the failures in order to get one success. an engineer when something is wrong -- would say something is wrong in the pipeline needs attention. you cannot simply look at one project at a time. i think there is a real opportunity to bring this kind of interdisciplinary approach to that in partnership with the private sector. they are also frustrated by the inefficiencies. the fda is a critical partner because they're watching over to see if we develop is safe and effective. why do we do testing of drugs before you give that molecule to a patient for the first time? you have to decide whether it might be toxic. how do we do that? it is the same way we have done

it for a long time. we tried on a bacterial system, small animals, large animals. it is tried but not that true. it clearly fails in some instances to predict toxicity. it probably clearly over predicts toxicity. some promising drugs may not make it into clinical trials because a mouse had a problem. why not try to get closer with patients? we now have this incredible proliferation of information about how to culture human cells to turn them into liver or heart cells. we can even build a three- dimensional organoids made out of those cells that representations of what goes on. if we organize this the way an engineer with, we could set up a system that would be more productive and probably faster and cheaper to do this simple

test of preclinical toxicology to see if it is safe to go forward with the first patient application. there are multiple other things we could be doing to speed up the process. it has not been possible to have that kind of focus until now. the science was not ready. the dynamics may not have been there. the interdisciplinary aspects between scientific disciplines has to apply across sectors where academia, government, and the private sector can get together to tackle the problem. i think the enthusiasm for that is very high right now. we are hoping to set up the center of transitional sciences to be a hub for that activity. i am excited about that as a way to take an innovative attitude and bring it to a problem. that will be critical for the future of medical advances. >> is the educational system

supporting that? >> we have an issue in terms of our education system in this country. do we have a pipeline of bright, capable scientists coming in? we clearly have the case through 12 system that is not encouraging -- k through 12 system that is not encouraging science asds to see sevent exciting. we're losing people after that. the work force is not as diverse as the population. we're losing bright minds from groups not traditionally represented in science. we cannot continue to count on the fact that our scientific leadership is going to come from other countries. we had a great opportunity in the past to recruit bright minds from all over the world. many of them stayed and became

central to our own national success. they are increasingly not staying. the opportunities to go back to home countries are getting very strong. we have not been particularly friendly to many of those individuals in terms of our visa policies. i think we're heading for a potential problem in terms of scientific talent. we do have a university system for training. it is getting better but very much based on the old model of the departments not talking to each other. we need to break down a lot of the barriers for our educational process if we're going to have the kind of scientists that she is talking about that she loves having in her own domain and were not afraid to jump from one discipline to another and may find it exhilarating. >> i am very passionate about k

through 12 education and what we can do. children love discovering. they love nature and the world around them. how do we keep them involved in that? it really is getting the hands- on experience. having projects that involve math relating to the environment. young kids are so aware of the energy, the environment, many issues i did not think about when i was a child. they naturally want to make a difference. they want to make the world better place. how do we incorporate that at the elementary school level so it is part of their everyday life? of course they can invent new approaches. of course science and math are critical components of

education. they are fun. i love my job. i cannot imagine anything more fun than what i would do -- what i do. what we get to invent and discover and do is keep. i do not know what the answer is for that. i try to do that as many universities and principal investigators do. it is the ability to capture the imagination. >> what you are working on now, they will have to pick up the baton. where do you see them taking it? where do you hope this leads? >> as a professor, you see the next generation is already better than you.

they are in the lab making discoveries and doing devices. they got into industry and start companies and their own laboratories and try to push things in different directions. i am going to stay in two main areas, materials for energy and materials for cancer. those are areas where i think we have the ability to make an impact. i will not work on something that will have an impact. -- i will not work on something that will not have an impact. i want to make a difference and make people's lives better. students share the same idea. you train these brilliant people. they go out and take the ideas in their own direction and continue. >> is there a vision of what you

want to see? >> i want to see environmentally friendly materials. abalone does not make things that are toxic to its environment. it uses ingredients and pressure. it uses higher-quality materials. my vision is to be able to do clean processing. i want something you can hold in your hand that makes a difference. you do a combination of genetics and mix that with a combination of many different possibilities of chemistry. unix those together and see what comes out. that is how we are developing new catalysts. -- you mix those together and see what comes out.

we used the power of biology, billions of experiencexperimente power of chemistry and mixed them together. we can only touch of a couple of kinds of applications. that is one example. the idea is better living through biology. you do not need billion dollar labs. things that are recyclable and do not go back into the environment are the division. >> if you have any questions, jot them down and i will try to go through the cards in the last few minutes. >> i am a physician. the reason i got so excited about genomics is the promise it holds for taking medicine from

where it has been to where it needs to go. we are going to see remarkable advances of that sort. >> will we get a cure for cancer? >> cancer is hundreds of diseases. we will get yours for some cancers. i know we will make remarkable progress. a lot of this is built on technology. science and technology are more tightly interwoven than ever. things angela is talking about would not be possible without these advances. just look at dna sequencing. nowgenome secresequencing could be done for about $8,000. we probably will be in the $1,000 range in the next three or four years. be analized medicine will

likely consequence. in some instances, people in taking advantage of that information. there was a recent analysis done looking at the first 10 years of the economic benefit of the $400 million investment in genomes. it was about $796 billion gained in economic growth in that 10 years. if you add up everything we spent on the genome project with the sequencing and other work, you still come up with a return of 141 to one. that is not bad. [laughter] that is at a time when resources are tight and people are trying to figure out the investments that will encourage the economy. i think that is worth paying attention to. i support over 487,000 jobs.

the economic growth from our investments in 2010 were $60 billion. the return on the average grant is over two-fold in one year for local economic goods and services. i hope there is enough legitimacy for us to say this is not only about advancing human health. it is also a way to grow the economy and support our competitiveness. if we are successful in retaining the best and brightest of this generation, we should have the opportunity to understand why people get cancer. we will have diagnostics that allow us to identify at an early stage when things go wrong. we will have a variety of opportunities for interventions that will be more powerful and

less toxic. that is a long, slow process. this is a marathon. unless people are willing to recognize that, there will always be cries because it is a long process. it is an exciting time to beat a scientist. some people think they missed the exciting things because they were not there when we sequenced the genome. exciting thing is now because we have the information and can start to figure out what is going on. imagine capturing all of the components in making accurate predictions about the cells. we can make a prediction about mutating a protein and what will happen. that is a ways off but would be exciting to contemplate putting together. 40 years ago, those ideas would have seen in st. -- would have

-- those things would have seemed insane 20 years ago but are now possible. >> with manufacturing materials in the united states, that is something we are all interested in. both of my companies are focused on making new materials and developing jobs. we are looking at developing a new process that could have a big impact on many different areas of jobs growth from oil and gas to the chemical industry. it is very exciting to be a part of. you are making something that could give you a cleaner source of energy and lower carbon

footprint while also creating jobs. it is a dream come true. >> natural gas to liquid fuel. >> it is the idea of taking the abundant resources of natural gas and methane from renewable sources. methane is a molecule carbon. it is entered. how do you use that as a building block to make longer chains? you put them together in a specific way. we have done catalyst discoveries using the billions of possibilities of biology to figure out how to make it so you can rearrange it in a very efficient manner. people have been wanting to do that for a long time. >> is it expensive?

>> the initial process will be quite a bit cheaper. we have developed catalysts that are very effective. starting a company is expensive. what is exciting to us is it is compatible with the existing chemical industry. we will take our materials and plants and put them into existing facilities. we will use existing natural gas to make fuel or products used in our everyday lives. it really came about through basic science and was positioned in to a company with fantastic engineers who said we will work on accommodations until we find the winner.

we are now interacting with industry. >> you are pretty much they're doing it. >> we are very excited. >> that is great. if you had a top three to concentrate on in terms of focusing on the and interest -- maybe we can go to the question. [laughter] >> one thing we have to be careful about at nih is not being overly top down and prescribing what is right for investment. the scientific community provides the best ideas. we have to focus on evaluating those in an object of an innovative way -- objective and

innovative way. we have the ability to read out all of the dna mistakes in a cancer cell. cancer is a disease of the genome. we have the opportunity to do this in a comprehensive way. there will be a new revelation about this regarding ovarian cancer this week with a publication. we are probably looking at the possibility of a universal influenza vaccine in the next few years by being able to take advantage of structural biology with innovative immunology and genomics in figuring out how to develop a vaccine you only have to take once with the booster every 20 years. perhaps the number who died from influencing each year will go down. amazing advances have happened in the field. -aids, a lot of

potential there for global application. we have to do something about alzheimer's disease. if we do not find a way to slow or stop that, it will wreak havoc. we have new insights into it in the last year that are exciting in terms of new therapeutic ideas that were not previously realized. new insights come out of genomics. studying why people get the disease, the pathways involved. that is a short list of what could be a very long list. i hope to get a sense of the unprecedented opportunities in front of us if we can push forward at maximum speed. >> it is education. it is making sure our young people have the opportunity to excel in math and science with

the mentors to get them excited about it to realize what a difference they can make by choosing the path of mouth, science, or engineering. >> with a question about how to encourage women to go into engineering or other science fields. >> it is at the early stages. you do not target them in high school or college necessarily. you look to elementary school through mentoring and encouragement. i only have data from my own institution. we have a lot of women in engineering and science. sometimes there are more women undergraduates than men. the area we have a problem with is getting more to go on for their ph.d. or go on to

academia. part of that is a lifestyle. i have had people tell me they do not want my life. [laughter] i think my life is pretty good. part of that is through mentoring and education. it is not like we are in an ivory tower working on interesting problems. it is about making a difference in the world with solution. i think that is things that kids will get excited about. making aular people difference in the world and not just solving problems and thinking. it really is about community and interacting with people and thinking about something bigger than yourself to make a difference. >> i do not think a lot of kids know what they will study at a young age.

i never knew until i got into reported on science about all the different deals out there. i wish more kids had my job. if i had known what was out there, i probably would have studied it more. what is your impression on the job prospects of interdisciplinary scientists? will they be welcomed into the workforce? >> i think at the forward- looking institutions, absolutely. that is when the greatest potential for advancement is, when you bring the disciplines together. at some institutions, those individuals have trouble finding a welcoming home because of the department of structures that may be mired in the past and not in the future.

computational biologists did not feel like they were recognized in the computer science department. in the biology department, it was like, where are your test tubes? it is moving forward. if you look at the recruitments at the top tier universities, a large number of them talk about looking for someone with interdisciplinary skills. >> one thing i tell young people is that being interdisciplinary is great. being an expert in one field and then integrating other disciplines. do not be a little about a lot. definitely have an understanding of your field and then add on to it. that makes you very solid. >> we're not changing the skills. we're just adding an improving. >> how you recognize and promote

talent outside the system, the non-academic genius? >> that is a tough one. >> do you have answers for that one? >> you would have to look at them case by case with particular arena and dream. one question we do not have a good fix on is the talent need, the supply and demand equation across many fields of science. i recently announced the president of princeton to lead up a working group from my advisory council about the work force. depending on who you talk to, we have too many or not enough ph.d.'s. they cannot both be right. we often think ph.d.'s will have

to be like us and continued at top universities. we send a signal about not wanting to have alternative careers. the way science is going with technology and engineering, there are a lot of needs and opportunities for interesting pathways that are not a full professor at mit. we do not do a good job in exposing graduates to those options in a way they can get a sense of what might be a good fit in industry. in teaching and education, we definitely need the creative minds. some areas are underserved by talent because they are seen as not quite as fundamentally important, but they are. you are trying to build a model

with help from people who know how to do it. it allows us to get a sense of what we're expecting to have as the supply of interested people from our country and others. then the possible pathways and needs of those pathways. nih supports a lot of the trading. we need to see if we're doing it right in terms of quality and quantity. is our training program well matched to the needs? i think she will get interesting answers. >> you have both highlighted the enormous potential of strategic investments in research. aarp is running ads about spending on medicare against picul research. how do we convince policymakers it is not a choice? >> we have economic arguments to bring to bear.

longevity has improved by about one year every six years in this country. if you add a book that has added to the economy since 1970, it is estimated to be about $95 trillion. if you asked about what has happened in terms of disabilities, we have reduced disabilities in individuals over 65 by 30% since 1970 through advances that allow people to be more functional and able to perform life activities. those are all pretty good return on investment. we have seen heart attacks dropped by more than 70%. we see cancer going down. for the last 10 years, it has been going down by about 1% per

year. each drop saves us $500 billion in terms of our economic situation. that is not bad when you consider the amount of money we put into research. the return is probably one of the best things we can possibly do. tell aarp, i am not sure the question is fair to aarp. they have been quite supportive of research as a means of trying to do things they care about. that is like preventing disabilities and doing something about alzheimer's disease. >> how do the social sciences play a role in innovation and economic growth? >> it is critical. yesterday, i spent the day at a think tank with experts from around the country to lay out the next agenda for social sciences as part of biomedical research. a lot of it is trying to

understand human behavior. so much of the disease we're trying to prevent is based on behavioral decisions. we've not done a good job of understanding the motivators that would result in better outcomes. this is a great time to do that. you cannot have personalized medicine unless you think about human behavior. otherwise nothing will change. it is a fertile field right now. >> should graduate students in the science be involved in innovations to turn discoveries into economic and social good? >> de- are doing it. >> i am not sure why the question was asked. -- they are doing it. students are looking for technologies that can make a big impact. a lot of times they are for economic good. a lot of times they are for countries that cannot afford better health care or less

expensive ways of getting energy sources to a different part of the world. that is something students are passionate about. as a professor, you are always having to weigh things out in terms of providing the best education for your students to go towards earning their ph.d.. it is great to have the final impact in technology in under- developed countries or inexpensive health care. we need to have things like engineers without borders and other programs where students go and work in other countries in economics, engineering, and science where they try to make an impact locally based on

technologies they have developed in class or other places. the young people are very passionate about that. >> there are a lot of exciting things and challenges ahead. thank you for joining us today. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] quickly have more from the brookings institute. we will h-- >> we have more froe brookings institute. this is about one hour. >> we were very excited putting this panel together. after watching the abalone shell, i turned to glenn and

asked where his was. i want to put this in context after hearing from the scientists. i think there are three economic issues the hamilton project is focused on right now. the first is we're continuing to suffer from the aftermath of the terrible financial crisis. there are 15 million americans out of work. by standard calculations, it could take up to a dozen years to work through that towards something that resembles full employment. that is a problem we have to confront. the second one is of a longer- term nature. we have been in this slump with respect to wages for most americans. one measure we have developed is

not that wages have stagnated over the last 40 years, but they have declined by 28%. the third situation that confronts the country is our fiscal situation is less than ideal. the debt to gdp ratio is increasing. we're reaching levels where countries have historical invited fiscal crises as we're trying to come out of the aftermath of one already. in the context of dealing with the first to problems. there's not a lot of latitude for government intervention. in many respects, the panel is about innovation. more broadly, we're going to have to do more with less. we're going to need innovation

in the way government delivers services, the way the economy works. that is what i want to have this panel talk about. another thing i want to start with is that i think there is a temptation when talking about innovation to kind of fall back on the standard pillars of having more basic r&d. that spending has been flat since the 1970's. our education system is not performing. we're spending more and get test scores are not keeping up with other countries. our infrastructure does not appear to be in great shape. on the other hand, our rate of return for structured spending is quite low. is a series of other things. i hope this discussion will move beyond a recitation of the standard solutions and come up

with new ideas. that is my goal today. i thought we would start with my good friend tim bresnahan, professor of technology at stanford university. he formerly chaired the department of economics and served as the chief economist of the antitrust department of the u.s. government. we constantly hear the u.s. is the most innovative nation on earth. we have smartphones, ipads, facebook. i do not have a facebook page. your research has suggested we may not be fully harvesting that innovation. can you talk about why and what some of the obstacles are? >> the ipad and facebook are fabulous technologies. they are wisely been taken up by

americans. mobile devices, you will see the applications on those serve consumption and not production. facebook is mostly a consumption activity. most of the apps on the ipad and iphone and android devices are part of entertainment media and consumption. they're not getting into productivity. those wonderful technologies show us there is still a tremendous opportunity going

forward for these new entrants into i.t. to revive productive advance. that is the story you heard with the first panel as well. you have heard the apple ad for the ipad. you see a physician looking at something in biology. you see a banker looking at a report on recent profitability. that is a great app. there is potential with these new applications for work but we do not use them much at work. the pace changes at the pace that bureaucracies choose to

take them up and the pace the market's choose to take them up. it is slow to change bureaucracies. the physician looking at the cell biology report, we have not yet as a society decided how the physician should take advantage of the new diagnostic tools we heard about in the previous panel. we have not decided how the physician should choose between extremely expensive new therapies and older and cheaper ones. that is an unresolved issue. our ability to automate hospitals using new technologies is partly enabled by new technologies. it is also partly bottlenecked

by our inability to set goals for what we would like the hospitals to accomplish and how we would like for them to make the difficult trade-offs. it will be hard for those bureaucracies like hospitals to decide what to do. it is very difficult to change markets. there is a new possibility in technology to change jobs around in financial services. that could permit enormous growth in that sector. we should also expect given how past technological things have come in that it will change at